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http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/10/4198658/
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http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/10/4198658/
of simultaneity or fusion. The French return to Indochina against the Viet Minh is an interesting case. The Viet Minh could certainly conduct a fluid form of warfare with modern conventional capabilities. Their success at Dien Bien Phu might be taken as a manifestation of hybrid combinations. Gen. Henri Navarres poor choice of terrain and overreliance on air-delivered logistics may have doomed the French more than the Viet Minhs combat capability. The American intervention in Vietnam is another classic case of the strategic synergy created by compound wars, posing the irregular tactics of the Viet Cong with the more conventional capabilities of the North Vietnamese Army. The ambiguity between conventional and unconventional approaches vexed military planners for several years. Even years afterward, Americans point to the conventional nature of the final victory by North Vietnams armor columns as an indicator that it was a conventional war. My colleague T.X. Hammes looks at the Afghans as a hybrid threat against the Russians in the 1980s. Certainly, the infusion of U.S. arms like the Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile gave this irregular force a particular conventional tool that helped offset the Soviets massive firepower advantage and the terrorizing Hind helicopter. Todays fight in Afghanistan may be an even better case, as there is overt evidence of increased terrorism, information operations and the criminally disruptive influences of opium production. In my monograph Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, I had dismissed the Chechens success in Grozny as a case where a former Soviet republic had access to Russian weapons and unique knowledge of their doctrine and tactics. In retrospect, I was wrong. The Chechens fusion of conventional capabilities, irregular tactics, information operations and deliberate terrorism makes this case an excellent prototype against a modern power. I am still finishing my study of the Balkans and the Serbian incursion into Kosovo. The latter appears to include modern air defense assets and modern armor, with ethnic cleansing and irregular urban tactics. Looking over the case history, it appears to meet the standard for hybrid warfare. As both Ralph Peters and I have separately written in these pages, Hezbollahs defiant resistance against the Israeli Defense Force in the summer of 2006 may be a classic example of a hybrid threat. The fusion of militia units, specially trained fighters and the anti-tank guided-missile teams marks this case, as does Hezbollahs employment of modern information operations, signals intelligence, operational and tactical rockets, armed UAVs and deadly anti-ship cruise missiles. Hezbollahs leaders describe their forces as a cross between an army and a guerrilla force, and believe they have developed a new model. More recently, the Russian incursion into Ossetia and Georgia in 2008 warrants some consideration. The Russian main thrust was conducted by armor columns, covered by bombers. However, there were irregular Chechen units, including the notorious Vostock Battalion, also present. Some of the destruction against economic targets and Georgian property can only be classified as terrorism, targeted killings and looting. This is a preliminary overview, and more detailed research is needed to delve deeper into the case histories before we can draw out insights. It appears that CW is the more frequent type, and that hybrid threats are simply a subcomponent of CW in which the degree of coordination or fusion occurs at lower levels. It also appears that the greater degree, the hybrid version, is increasing in frequency. We need to study the interaction of different strategies and the intended victory/defeat mechanisms of the protagonists. What strategies are effective against compound or hybrid threats? How does it influence campaign design and operational art? Are classical counterinsurgency and Field Manual 3-24 relevant, or is more discriminate firepower required? Does it matter whether the hybrid threat is embedded as part of a homogenous and supporting population? I realize that there are those uncomfortable with the messy combinations of modern conflict, and those who dont like the notion of hybrid threats. Some of my colleagues have moaned about the spate of new terminology being thrown around today. Our profession evolves over time, and new lexicon captures the changes better than hanging on to old terms with newer meanings. If we were still fighting in phalanxes or using the tactics of Marcus Aurelius, we could cling to dated definitions and conceptions. However, since we are not, the argument seems rather moot to me. Up until the current conflict, we had poor doctrinal terms such as low-intensity conflict and military operations other than war. We eventually dismissed those terms as inadequate, and our profession benefited from their expulsion. I am equally uncomfortable with untested terms and assumptions in the joint community about conventional powers and our current understanding of irregular warfare. I am distressed to hear general officers describe China, North Korea or Iran as conventional. I am even more dissatisfied with the parochial arguments supporting a return to the Revolution in Military Affairs and Transformation agenda of the 1990s that got us where we are today. That agenda was focused without any regard to what sort of enemies we were fighting, which is the antithesis to the hybrid warfare debate. A QDR DEBATE I would like the Pentagon and the defense community to use the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review to debate the range of threats we face and their potential combination. We need to assess todays likely irregular threat and potential for high-end asymmetric threats. But this raises a critical issue in our evaluation of the emerging character of conflict: Is the character of conflict diverging into lower and higher forms, or converging, as the hybrid threat suggests? Defense Secretary Robert Gates appears to embrace the convergence of threats and assesses this as likely and dangerous. How is this being incorporated into the scenarios and analyses of the QDR? In closing, this effort has tried to clarify hybrid threats so that the concept can be fully debated. There are a number of definitions of hybrid threats that emphasize different characteristics. We need to work through both the definitional aspect and its implications. Undoubtedly, the concept is imperfect and its implications are unclear. Just as clearly, some of our existing vocabulary and our understanding of modern conflict are woefully insufficient. Further historical analyses and more war games are required to ascertain the implications in campaign design, operational art, doctrine and training. Our adversaries appear committed to learning and adapting; hopefully we measure up as just as curious and just as resolved to win. If at the end of the day we drop the hybrid term and simply gain a better understanding of the large gray space between our idealized bins and pristine Western categorizations, we will have made progress. If we educate ourselves about how to better prepare for that messy gray phenomenon and avoid the Groznys, Mogadishus and Bint Jbeils of our future, we will have taken great strides forward. AFJ FRANK G. HOFFMAN served more than 24 years as a Marine Corps officer. The views expressed here are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Department.
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